Most ATMs working as fibre cable fixed

ON GUARD: Security personnel flew into Gisborne yesterday from Christchurch firm Red Badge to help manage queues at ATM machines. Pictured this morning outside the city's ASB Bank machines are from left Newton Ngata, Charlie Malcolm, and Josh Turner. Picture by Sarah Curtis

People who queued for hours last week hoping to get cash from an ATM machine in Ballance Street when every other ATM in Gisborne was down, weren't acting on a baseless rumour.

They had received leaked information, albeit based on wishful thinking.

Field service engineer Bayne Dalziell said a meeting was held on Thursday for IT specialists to discuss with representatives from stakeholder groups the potential for the city's two Allpoint machines — one in Ballance Street, one at Pak'nSave — to be working on Friday.

The discussion was supposed to be confidential but word got out, hence the crowd that started to gather at the Ballance Street ATM as early as 6am on Friday. People also gathered at the Pak'nSave machine.

The Allpoint machines and two Kiwibank machines in Gisborne run on cell tower signal while nearly every other ATM in the city is reliant on the region's fibre optic cable, which was damaged by Cyclone Gabrielle.

As power was restored to cell tower sites and signal began to improve — reportedly reaching about 74 percent on Thursday — the Allpoint and Kiwibank machines began to spring back to life.

However, the signal was still sporadic and the machines only worked when it was strong enough, Mr Dalziell said.

One of the first people at the Ballance Street machine on Friday was apparently able to withdraw cash before it refused to spit out any more. Other people were seen making withdrawals from it at about 10pm.

A few more transactions were successfully completed on Saturday morning before the machine stopped working again and Mr Dalziell went to inspect it.

Waiting for police so he could gain access to the machine, Mr Dalziell said he was hopeful the fault might just be that it had run out of cash. That would be easily fixed. If cell tower signal was to blame, the people hoping to use the machine would likely be waiting a lot longer.

However, by 4pm none of it mattered. Technicians working on the northern stretch of the fibre optic cable completed their final repairs, internet services were restored, and all the city's ATM machines should have been operational.

Not all were though, and queues formed at the ones that were working. People who went to the ASB bank machines about 3pm yesterday were told the machines would be operational once security guards arrived. A staff member had gone to the airport to collect the guards but their plane had been delayed by about an hour.

Mr Dalziell said banks would be looking into ways they could make ATM machines more resilient in future, to the connectivity issues Cyclone Gabrielle had created.